Critics of Michigan’s Skybox Plan Fighting Long Odds

Renovations to the 107,501-seat Michigan Stadium have begun, but a plan to build luxury boxes has been called elitist by some alumni.Credit
John T. Greilick/Associated Press via The Detroit News

At 4-0, Michigan’s football team is enjoying its best start since 1999, but there is rancor within the ranks.

It is not among Wolverines players, who defeated Wisconsin, 27-13, on Saturday and will play at Minnesota this weekend. It was, however, evident last week around the eight-member Board of Regents, the elected officials who govern the university.

Six speakers at Friday’s board meeting supported the administration’s plan to add luxury boxes to the 107,501-seat Michigan Stadium as part of a $226 million renovation. Two supporters invoked the name of Fielding H. Yost, a legendary coach and athletic director. Yost directed the design of the stadium, which opened in 1927.

John U. Bacon, an author, said, “Fielding Yost was a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist” who would have supported the plan to add the suites and other exclusive seating that would sell for premium prices.

John Kryk, who described himself as a Michigan football historian, said, “Somewhere, Yost is cringing” over the opposition to luxury boxes. He said Yost “never intended for the stadium to remain for all time a single-deck bowl.”

Sitting silently nearby in the conference room on the Ann Arbor campus was another interested fan: Fielding H. Yost III, a slightly built and bearded grandson of Yost. He opposes the luxury boxes but was not allowed to speak to the board.

Interviewed outside the meeting, Yost — who lives in Midland, Mich., and renovates homes — said that adding luxury boxes while taking away bench seats was “a finger in the eye about social levels; it’s about elitism and stratification.”

Although the board voted, 5-3, last spring to hire an architect to plan boxes and additional renovations, it still must approve the design and financing. The design vote could come in November, and the financing vote is expected early next year. There will be other opportunities for supporters and opponentsto address the board.

Yost said he supported an activist group called Save the Big House, which unveiled an alternate plan last week that it said could finance renovations throughout the stadium — an argument also made by those who favor luxury boxes — by adding 15 rows of bleachers at the top of the bowl at a cost of $66 million without building private boxes.

This plan would increase capacity to 117,001 while improving aisles, facilities for the disabled, concourses and restrooms, according to John Pollack, who has organized the opposition through a Web site, savethebighouse.com.

Yost says he has a master’s degree from Michigan in public policy and has two season tickets in Row 80 on the 48-yard line. “I’m dismayed with the luxury boxes,” he said. “There are alternatives that need to explored. This is about the denigrating role of money in athletics.”

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Yost was born in 1948, two years after his grandfather died. He said he was not sure what his grandfather would have wanted, but he knows his own mind. He said luxury boxes “remind me of the old Romans with their bread and circuses.”

William Wilson, an alumnus and the sole opponent of the plan, told the board that the selections of speakers “was jimmied” against Yost and other foes.

But Julie A. Peterson, associate vice president for media relations and public affairs, disagreed. “It’s on a first-come, first-serve basis,” Peterson said. “Those slots filled up pretty quickly. The process was straightforward.”

David A. Brandon, the regent most supportive of the luxury box plan, said the suites would finance upgrades to the stadium, help pay for other sports and keep Michigan competitive in athletic recruiting.

“Stadiums around the country are not being renovated to include club and enclosed seating because it is a bad economic decision to do so!” Brandon wrote in an e-mail message. “The business case is a good one.”

Brandon said there was strong support for renovation among alumni and ticket-holders.

Laurence B. Deitch, the regent most opposed to the plan, said in an interview that there could be widespread opposition when details become public.

“It is risky and a bad economic proposition,” said Deitch, who predicted that the cost would exceed the projected $226 million. “People have gotten dug in on this because it’s about winning and losing.”

He said the state’s struggling economy, particularly the decline in the automobile industry, made the university look elitist and disconnected.

Philip Nussel, an alumnus who spoke to the regents in favor of the project, said he visited Ohio State and saw its new luxury boxes. “It was sickening,” he said. “They were so far ahead of us. I was jealous.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Critics of Michigan’s Skybox Plan Fighting Long Odds. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe